No showers for 9 days

No showers for 9 days

During a lockdown, there are always fools yelling out their cell doors demanding they have "rights" that they are entitled to and should be fulfilled. Funnily enough, no one actually knows what these "rights" actually are. We also aren't allowed to have anything that resembles a list of things that says what the prison is required to do, but many people yell for our "required" 1 hour or 3 or 10 per week outside for fresh air (my observation having not being allowed outside for 7 months) or, as has come up lately, our "right" for a shower every day or 3 days or 5 or... never? A new reading of policy has said they actually don't have to give us a shower. Ever. This is what we were told repeatedly by high-ranking staff including associate wardens.

This experience was new to everyone. I know people who have been in prison for 20+ years that have never seen the staff withhold showers for over a week. But to bring it home, picture two men who live in a bathroom with each other, working out, living a normal life of a human.. I doubt many of you out there have ever been subjected to this kind of treatment, but it’s a strange thing to know that someone could take something that seems so fundamentally part of being a human. And then after 9 days, they cuffed us to pull us out of the cell and search and they made fun of us for reeking so bad. I’m still trying to wrap my head around what anyone in here could have done to deserve that kind of treatment.

Whose brainchild was this new initiative, anyway? Can you picture the type of person who was poring over massive tomes of policies and procedures trying to see if they could get away with not allowing thousands of people locked in cages to shower?! This disturbs me. It feels like another step down into the depths of inhumanity and the ranks of whose who subject people to the worst they can get away with (to quote MLK Jr "Everything Hitler did was legal.") under the aegis of "just following orders".

Admittedly, they haven't quite reached the level of slave-masters or Fuhrers, but surely not allowing basic human sanitary is a step in that direction, right?

What is strange is that I'm not really that outraged. It's not as if this is out of keeping with their usual treatment of us. I think it's far worse that we allowed them to starve us than that they are now not letting us shower. This is just new. Another step away from being given basic human rights. It's terrible that you can come to accept it.

Personally, I think not letting us call home is worse than much else. We lock down, sometimes for weeks or months, and we're not allowed to tell our families we're okay. Where do you think that lies on the "misdeeds against humanity" descent? Below or above refusing medical treatment. I'd think it's after being locked in cage like an animal. We are well on our way to resembling something like a concentration camp, huh? Hopefully someone (maybe you?) will find out about this before it gets much worse. What if they decide they don't have to feed us? Or that running water is a luxury not for the lowly inmate?

Luckily(?) we know it can (and likely will) continue to get worse.